Squirrel knocks out power to homes, school in Lancaster

COLUMBIA (AP) — Officials say a power outage that affected 2,471 people and forced an elementary school to close in southeastern Pennsylvania was caused by a squirrel.

Park Elementary School in Columbia had to close Tuesday morning after the critter came into contact with a primary wire, starting a fire and causing the wires to fall.

Officials say no one was injured in the incident.

PPL crews managed to restore electricity to all but 252 people within a few hours.

PPL Electric Utilities spokeswoman Jessica Long tells LNP (http://bit.ly/1B9Uv2f) the squirrel also caused a circuit breaker to trip and cause fuses in a transformer to malfunction, knocking out power for 21 customers.

PPL has been adding animal guard insulators at the end of transformers to prevent these types of incidents.